You don’t have to cut me open and count the rings to know how old I am. Just ask me how many times I’ve seen fashion trends come around again.
This fall the fashionistas are touting skinny jeans, leggings and blazers with boxy shoulders. Although I didn’t move to Toronto until 1990, those late-80’s wardrobe items were staples back then. I vividly remember going to the Bay downtown and dropping a wad of money on blazers with strong shoulder pads that were long enough to cover my bum so I could wear them with leggings. And that was my uniform: black leggings, black tank top and a brightly coloured blazer. I shudder at the memory but releasing it from a dark corner of my brain feels cathartic!
Oh the look worked for me, don’t get me wrong. I was as fit and trim as I ever was and with my huge poodle-hair, right in with the times. Really. You had to be there. Trust me, it’s not just rose-coloured hindsight, I was hip! But now I’m bracing for a fall filled with 20-something women dressed in their finest Hamlet look, which will be brand new to them. And do they know they should be wearing flats and not those pointy high heels they teeter in down at City Centre? Of course they don’t! Its’ 20 years ago all over again and it doesn’t matter that I don’t like to live in the past. It’s coming back anyway.